Matters of Life and Death

When it’s war, or even the threat of war, we Americans pull out all stops and forge ahead, sparing no effort or expense, to ensure victory. If needed, we will impose a draft, increase taxes, build ships, aircraft, missiles, and weapons of mass destruction, the likes of which the world has ever seen. On land, air, and sea, we will destroy any enemy that threatens the lives of our citizens. If one of our soldiers is trapped behind enemy lines, we will send whatever resources it takes to free the individual from harm. If our troops are killed, we will go to extraordinary lengths to retrieve their bodies, even risking others’ lives if necessary, and we will continue these efforts for decades after war ends.

We maintain the largest and most powerful military force on the planet in order to make it clear that attacking us will be a suicidal mission. Protecting our citizens is so powerful an ethos that we will even furnish legal services at public expense when a fellow American is charged with a crime. After all, this could be a matter of life and death.

Suppose, though, that our fallen soldier’s mother, sister, aunt, or grandmother’s life is threatened by an illness like breast cancer, and she can’t afford medical insurance. What do we do then? Raise armies? Raise taxes? Send forth doctors and surgeons dressed in fatigues?

Not at all.

Not only do we stand by and watch them die slowly from a lack of treatment, but nearly half of our population characterizes attempts to remedy this moral failure as an assault on their freedom.

Indeed, in a way, freedom is at play here—unlimited freedom for profits. The charge that Obamacare is a government takeover of healthcare, actually means that the government is limiting the ability of the insurance industry to make runaway profits at the expense of medical treatment. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to incite and inspire rage about this alleged loss of personal freedom.

So let’s talk about freedom—like the freedom to continue living when one is attacked by an illness that doesn’t require armies or multi-million dollar bombs to cure, only a health insurance policy that works more for the benefit of patients than for insurance companies. Before Obamacare, thousands of people hung onto jobs they despised simply because they were afraid of losing their healthcare insurance. That’s lack of freedom.

The argument that mandated insurance coverage results in an actual loss of freedom is such an assault on common sense and common decency that it defies any and all attempts to explain it in the context of what it means to be protected under the umbrella of American citizenship.

The current political polarization motivated by the millions of dollars spent on behalf of the insurance lobby has become so vitriolic that much of the goodwill that gives us a sense of national identity as Americans has been lost. Blind rage stands in for civilized dialogue, as extreme Tea Party types express an anxious willingness to sink the ship of state and drown everyone if they can’t have everything their own way. They view themselves as the only true Americans.

Stopping at nothing to prevent a loss of life in war and then looking the other way when private citizens are threatened—not by an army, but by a lack of enough monetary resources to cover the cost of treatment—is a kind of social madness that can only occur when benevolence is trampled by seething contempt.

Such derision is made possible by so alienating one’s opposition as to think them unworthy of being considered one of us. This has to be the case unless being an American and having one’s life threatened is meaningless. Populist scorn has become so ubiquitous that an audience broke into cheering at a presidential political debate earlier this year at the mere mention of letting someone die who had elected not to purchase health insurance.

The current level of political insanity can be seen for what it is when you realize fully that the blueprint for Obamacare was drawn up by conservatives and only became toxic when the opposition adopted it. The push for unfettered profit at the expense of medical care has resulted in an orchestrated pandemic of political hostility paid for by the insurance lobby. This is something to keep in mind when you vote in November: War and serious illness are matters of life and death and should not be considered profit centers or political talking points.

Our service men and women who have been killed in battle deserve something more for the relatives they left behind than derision and alienation because they need a doctor and don’t have enough personal wealth to cover the cost.

If the people shouting about mandated insurance encroaching on their personal freedom would stop listening to the rebel rousers and simply think, they would realize that the sacrifices our service men and women have made on the battlefield should cover the cost of those who can’t afford medical treatment.

If being an American means anything, it means the bill has been paid in full.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LA Progressive, its publisher, editor or any of its other contributors.

About Charles D. Hayes

Charles D. Hayes is a self-taught philosopher and one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning. He spent his youth in Texas and served as a U.S. Marine and as a police officer before embarking on a career in the oil industry. Alaska has been his home for more than forty years.
Promoting the idea that education should be thought of not as something you get but as something you take, Hayes encourages readers to pursue learning throughout their lives, to stay receptive to new ideas, and to consider their legacy to future generations in the actions they take and the wisdom they convey. In 2006, he established www.septemberuniversity.org, a site devoted to ongoing dialogue among September University participants in search of the better argument.
Hayes’ work has been featured in The L.A. Progressive, USA Today, and the UTNE Reader, on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and on Alaska Public Radio’s Talk of Alaska. His web site, www.autodidactic.com, provides resources for self-directed learners—from advice about credentials to philosophy about the value that lifelong learning brings to everyday living.
All books and shorter works by Charles D. Hayes are availablehere.

LGBT Rights

Irene Monroe: Long before June officially became Gay Pride Month, and October “Coming Out Month” for the LGBTQ community, Halloween was unofficially our yearly celebrated “holiday,” dating as far back at the 1970s when it was a massive annual street party in San Francisco’s Castro district.

The Middle East

Richard Greeman: Anti-government demonstrations spread across Morocco after social media spread the story of Mousine Fikri, a fishmonger crushed to death inside a garbage truck as he tried to block the destruction of a truckload of his fish confiscated by police.